Woodhull, Victoria

Woodhull, Victoria

 orig. Victoria Claflin

(born Sept. 23, 1838, Homer, Ohio, U.S.—died June 10, 1927, Norton Park, Bremons, Worcestershire, Eng.) U.S. social reformer. She and her sister Tennessee Claflin (1845–1923) were raised in a family of traveling spiritualists. After Victoria's marriage (1853) to Canning Woodhull ended in 1864, the sisters opened a successful brokerage firm in New York. They founded Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly (1870), which advocated equal rights for women, a single standard of morality for both sexes, and free love. A splinter group of radical suffragists formed a political party in 1872 and nominated Woodhull for president with Frederick Douglass as vice president. In 1872 the sisters published the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto. For printing news of an alleged adulterous affair by Henry Ward Beecher, they were charged with libel but acquitted (1873). They moved to England (1877), where they lectured, worked for charities, and married wealthy Englishmen. Woodhull and her daughter published the eugenics journal Humanitarian (1892–1910).